The Weird and Dangerous World of Sleeping Pills

Last winter, Tiger Woods and his harem of honeys titillated the nation with so many sordid stories that the oddest of them all was nearly overlooked: Woods's rumored recreational use of the prescription sleep medication Ambien. You could almost hear the collective "Huh?" as people tried to imagine how a widely prescribed (and seemingly benign) insomnia drug could produce an aphrodisiacal haze ideal for crazy sex romps.

Of course, Woods isn't the only celebrity whose pill-popping has publicized Ambien in ways its designers never intended. In 2006, U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy blamed his disorientation on the drug after he smashed his Mustang into a security barrier near the Capitol building. Lindsay Lohan cites Ambien as the trigger for her first stint in rehab--this after she took it, fell asleep on the floor next to a hotel bathtub, and woke only when the water overflowed.

Ambien (generic name zolpidem tartrate) was the first of a revolutionary class of sleeping pills that today includes Sonata (zaleplon), Lunesta (eszopiclone), and Ambien CR (an extended-release formulation). They've been nicknamed "Z drugs"--partly because of their ability to induce z's, and partly because of the ubiquity of z's in their generic names.

To marketers and many sleep researchers, these drugs deserve the hype. Boosters maintain that they're a quantum leap forward in the medical treatment of insomnia--potent, yet with fewer side effects even after people take them for a long time.

But to a growing cadre of critics, the once-bright halo over Z drugs is quickly corroding. On March 6, 2006, New York attorney Susan Chana Lask filed a class-action lawsuit against Ambien's maker, the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-aventis. The complaint alleged that more than 1,000 people suffered injury or damage as a direct result of their Ambien use, and included charges that the company failed to "adequately and sufficiently" warn doctors, patients, and the public about the drug's side effects. It also detailed nightmare stories of people sleep-driving, gorging themselves on food, and even waking up in jail with no memory of what had happened. Lask coined a name for these people: Ambien zombies.

The lawsuit was withdrawn a little over a year later after the FDA requested new warnings about the potential for what it called "complex sleep-related behaviors." The agency also called for a warning about another potentially lethal side effect: anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction that could swell the tongue and throat, obstructing the user's airway.

So far at least, I have managed to avoid asphyxiation. As for Ambien zombiehood, that's a different story.

I took my first Ambien in 1995 as a remedy for months of nightly insomnia. I'd be lying if I said I didn't love this drug from the get-go.

But now, after 15 years of on-and-off use, I'd be lying if I said I don't hate it, too.